Thursday, July 26, 2012

Egypt's President Insulted Over Video: 'The Children are Ready'

Arab media are expressing the view that an
innocent video prepared to mark a holy Jewish fast day was actually secretly
intended as an insult to newly-elected Egyptian President Mohamed
Morsi.

The video produced by the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, was
featured by Arutz Sheva in an article about the somber day of Tisha B'Av, the ninth
day in the Hebrew month of Av, when both the First and Second Holy Temples in
Jerusalem were destroyed. Although the day this year falls on Saturday, because
it is the Sabbath, the fast is delayed and does not begin until sundown. It
continues through the next day, Sunday.

The dramatic video has gone viral in just a
few days. It depicts children on the beach building a beautiful model of the
still-to-come and hoped-for Third Holy Temple out of sand, and calling their
father to come look. It concludes with a message to adults, “The children are
ready.”

Morsi has allegedly complained over a brief segment in which the
father, seeing the edifice his children have built, drops his newspaper in
surprise. The paper falls and folds to show a blurred image of Morsi’s face,
which the Egyptians obviously felt was intended to symbolize Jewish attempts to
curb Islamist aspirations for complete dominance of the Temple Mount - a central
theme of Morsi's campaign. Morsi was backed by his Muslim Brotherhood party,
which dominated both houses of the Egyptian parliament before it was dissolved
by a constitutional order of the High Court.

The Temple Institute denies
that the picture was intentional, saying that Morsi figured in many articles
during the time the video was filmed and that the picture of his face on that
page of the newspaper was entirely coincidental. The Institute added that
neither Morsi nor Egypt is part of the story line of the video. The appearance
of an article about him on the page that day was not by intent.

The
video, released six days ago, has drawn almost 200,000 views, as well as the
attention of several Arabic language news outlets.

The Islamic Waqf
Authority, the Muslim organization to which authority over the Temple Mount was
given by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan after the 1967 Six Day War, has been
systematically attempting to destroy all vestiges of Jewish presence on the holy
site.

Radical Islamists -- and particularly those preaching from the
Temple Mount in recent years -- have claimed that a Jewish Holy Temple never
existed on the Mount, the site of the Holy of Holies where by Torah Law Jewish
High Priests are the only ones allowed to enter.

This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.